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Virginia 

in tlie 

Making of Illinois 



By 



H. J. Eckenrode 




Reprinted from the Transactions of the Illinois State Historical 
Society. Publication No. 24, 1918 



[Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] 



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Virginia 



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in the 



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Making of Illinois 



By 

Ht ^f Eckenrode 




Reprinted from the Transactions of the llHnois State Historical 
Society, Pubhcation No. 24, 1918 



rPrinte'i l>y autlioiity of the State of Illinois.] 






Springfield, III. 

Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers 

19 19 

17548—25 



JUN 2o m^. 



VIRGINIA IN THE MAKING OF ILLINOIS. 



(By H. J. Eckenrode.) 

It is my privilege to bear the iraterual greetings of the Virginia 
Historical Society to this assembly on the happy and auspicious occasion 
of the celebration of the one-hundredth ajiniversary of the Statehood of 
Illinois. It is also my honor and pleasure this evening to speak of the 
part played by Virginia in the origin and development of Illinois. 

Illinois has been often called, and with reason, the foremost com- 
monwealth of the Union ; and, as we see it to-day it is great, prosperous, 
rich in material wealth and rich in human happiness. It is a type of 
modern civilization, offering all that seems best in twentieth-century 
life. But it is not of the present Illinois, in which it has been your 
fortunate lot to be born, that I am here to speak, but of that Illinois 
of long ago, the Illinois of forests and uninhabited prairies, of Indians 
and wild beasts — the embryo Illinois, still unshaped by fate, as it waited 
to be born. The task is mine to outline those prenatal forces which 
determined what Illinois should be, when, in the fulness of time, it 
became a community of civilized men. 

Happily there is no tendency to-day to begrudge the South the credit 
due it for its share in the making of America. After the long estrange- 
ment all parts of the United States are now joined in a fraternal love and 
fellowship which augurs well for the future of the nation. One of your 
finest Middle West statesmen — one of the finest Americans of the present 
generation, in my opinion — ex-Senator Beveridge of Indiana, in his great 
work on John Marshall, has generously acknowledged the important 
contribution of Virginia to the development of America. In the publi- 
cations of the Illinois Historical Society, which are a model of scholar- 
ship and of the book-maker's art as well, the great work done by Virginia 
in the West is set forth at length. Indeed, in recent years there has 
been a growing tendency all through the North and West to appreciate 
at its full worth the part of the South in the moulding of the American 
nation, and a realization that without the South the national life would 
be the poorer. 

The discovery of America was one of those events which should 
help to confirm our faith in providence, even in spite of the fearful 
turmoil of the present. The discovery was not only a matter of supreme 
good fortune to mankind, but the time of discovery as well. It came 
at the end of the Middle Ages, in a period of great change and rapid 
development, when the influence of such an unprecedented happening 
produced its maximum effect. If the Norse had colonized America cen- 
turies before Columbus, there would have been only another feudal 
Europe on our shores ; if the discovery of America had been delayed until 
Europe had come into full contact with India and the East and had 
completed the growth of the new civilization which came into being at 



the close of the feudal era, America would not have so greatly influenced 
the life of humanity. But the discover}^ by enlarging man's physical 
world by vast, uninhabited regions at the very moment when his spiritual 
and intellectual vision was enlarging, proved decisive of the future of 
the race. 

At the end of the Middle Ages, European man had passed through 
the centuries of disorder and anarchy following the destruction of antique 
civilization and was busily engaged in evolving a life which embodied 
the germ of representative government and the other great, distinctive 
modern ideas. Much had been learned in the Middle Ages, but man had 
suft'ered very grievously in the course of his hard schooling. Political 
and social caste had become more deeply imbedded in man's conscious- 
ness than at any other time in human existence, and democracy was as 
yet almost unthought of. Sir Thomas Mere's Utopia, written at this 
time, seemed a hopeless dream of justice and equality. Class distinctions 
were embodied in law, and the chance for the poor man, the obscure man, 
in England as in all European countries, was exceedingly small. There 
was then, at the time of the discovery of America, a young and plastic 
civilization, full of promise but threatened with destruction by the grow- 
ing economic pressure due to an increasing population. Some way of 
emancipation was needed and the New World supplied the need. 

When the English settled America — Virginia first in 1607, and 
Massachusetts a few years later — they brought with them- the ideas, 
traditions and prejudices of medieval Europe, along with the priceless 
inheritance of English liberty and English institutions. The contempo- 
rary accounts of American life in the first century of colonization do not 
make cheerful reading. De Foe, for instance, paints a dreary picture 
of Virginia, and there is no hint in his description of the splendid 
civilization maturing beneath the surface. In New England, too, there 
was a long age of religious bigotry and narrow living— of smallness and 
dulness — before the New England spirit gained its great historic growth. 

But gradually, in the vast areas of America, in the immense stretches 
of pine and oak forest, oifering breathing-space and working-space and 
happiness-space to the immigrants from crowded Europe, a spiritual 
revolution was wrought. Every individual was offered a chance to 
become a free man — that is to make a decent living for himself and for 
his family without a master over him. The pine forests have proved good 
for the health of the ailing body ; they were also good for the ailing spirit. 
European man came sick to the American shores and in the wild, un- 
tenanted woods his soul found healing. He began to lose his age-long 
class consciousness and to stand erect and free. 

The English in Virginia, favored by a good soil and kindly climate, 
built up one of the two civilizations which were destined to grow into the 
United States. The other was developing, at the same time and quite 
independently, in New England. 

The community founded by the tobacco planters in Virgmia was one 
of the most notable and influential in modern history, by reason of its 
singular charm and its solid merit as well. It was a life of great freedom 
and eminent sanity that the planters lived on the beautiful rivers of old 



Virginia. The spell of that life, ?!0 admirabW described by our am- 
bassador to Italy, Thomas Xelson Page, has been cast over the whole 
South and West. Surely the gracious tradition of Middle West hospi- 
tality is Virginian in origin, and from the same source comes the Mddle 
^.'est joy of living. 

The fine tradition of English constitutional liberty flowered in the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, which, by the middle of the eighteenth 
century, had become in many ways the foremost legislative body in the 
world. The modern committee system was first perfected in the House 
of Burgesses, before the House of Commons in England and before our 
own Congress. In almost every way the House of Burgesses was a model 
of parliamentary procedure and enlightened legislation. It was this 
House of Burgesses which first perceived and resisted the sinister 
tendencies of the British government as these became manifest at various 
times in the eighteenth century. It maintained clearly and effectively 
the principle of constitutional government. 

In Virginia, in that wonderful period between the close of the 
French and Indian War and the close of the Eevolution, American 
democracy grew to fruition. The Virginia planters, far freer and far 
more generous in outlook than their brethren, the English landed pro- 
prietors, willingly adopted the ideals of democracy and gave them 
practical realization in the government of the commonwealth. 

It was the great democrat Patrick Henry, whose name should be 
forever dear to the lovers of liberty, that first openly defied the British 
government and began the Eevolution. It was the equally great George 
Mason, who, in the Virginia Bill of Eights, laid down, once for all, the 
principles of free government, and who, in the Virginia constitution of 
1776, gave the world the first written constitution. And there, too, 
was Thomas Jefferson, the greatest of them all, who wrote the Declar- 
ation of Independence and changed the ideal of national democracy from 
the dream-stuff of generous thinkers into that governmental system to 
which our allegiance and our lives are pledged. 

Virginia and New England together lighted the fires of the Eev- 
olution and brought the American nation into being in that ever-happy 
year of 1776. But the outcome of the war with the greatest military 
power of the age was doubtful ; and even if independence were achieved, 
it seemed likely that the United States would be bounded on the west by 
the Alleghany Mountains. There were then no American settlers in 
the vast region between the Ohio Eiver and the Great Lakes. A few 
Frenchmen were the only white inhabitants of this region, which was 
held by the British garrisons at various points. If the year 178.3 had 
found those garrisons still in possession, of the Illinois country, the 
ground we stand on Avould be English soil and not American. The 
whole history of the United States would have been different, its promise 
would have been frustrated.. The United States to-day would be a 
second-rate power instead of the greatest and strongest nation on the 
globe. 

The fact is held in grateful remembrance by all Americans that 
a Virginian preserved our country from a thwarted destiny and gave to 



the republic the incomparable gift of the Middle West. Xot equally well 
known is the share of the Virginia government in bringing about the 
fortunate consummation. 

George Rogers Clark was one of -those immortal men who see through 
the darkness of the present to the may-be of the future, and so save the 
world from the might-have-beens. Amidst all the distraction of the 
Eevolutionary War as it raged in the East, Clark preserved a wise de- 
tachment. He realized the possibilities of the great forest-covered, 
Indian-haunted West. The West fascinated him and he turned from 
the opportunity of honorable service in the Continental Army to the 
greater service of claiming the West for America. He dreamed of lead- 
ing an army past the Alleghanies and driving the British from the land. 

He could do nothing, however, without some governmental sanction 
and aid. And where was this aid to be obtained? The harassed Con- 
tinental Congress, at its wit's end to keep the Eastern army supplied and 
equipped, had no thought or resources to devote to so remote an adventure 
as the conquest of the West. Clark's one chance lay in the favorable 
action of the Virginia government, and consequently he went to Williams- 
burg and laid his case before the authorities. 

]\Iost fortunately for America and the world, Patrick Henry 
happened to be governor of Virginia at the time, and he was the farthest- 
sighted statesman of his age. When the young Clark pleaded with him 
for his great idea, Henry listened with sympathy. He then called in 
consultation Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and George Wythe, and 
the decision was made to send out the expedition destined to conquer 
the West — surely one of the most fateful decisions ever made. 

It required courage on Henry's part to think of making efforts in a 
new field at such a time. iMy researches in the Virginia Department of 
Archives, which in recent years has become a center of historical study, 
taught mo that Virginia's share in the support of the American Rev- 
olution has been greatly underestimated. The records show that through 
all the early years of the struggle, when the North was the scene of in- 
vasion and therefore weakened in resources, immense quantities of beef 
and flour and thousands of guns went up Chesapeake Bay to Washing- 
ton's Army. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that that army could 
not have kept the field but for the aid given by the Southern common- 
wealth. 

Althougli the burden of the Revolution thus rested so largely on 
Virginia, and every dollar was badly needed for the prosecution of the 
war in the East, Patrick Henry was sufficiently large-minded to see the 
vital importance of the West and to make a special effort to claim it. 
The means available were small and could not have been otherwise than 
small at such a moment. The obstacles were almost insuperable. Cir- 
cumstances and men alike seemed to conspire against the undertaking; 
and if it had not been for the unyielding will and unfailing enthusiasm 
of George Rogers Clark, the expedition would never have set out at all. 

But at last, in that history-making summer of 1778, Clark sailed 
down the Ohio to claim for America a land richer than all the El 
Doradoes of the imagination. He had something less than two hundred 



men, and the little company trusted itself to the waters' on rough wooden 
scows which were without other motive power than hand-poles. And 
3^et his small expedition, armed only with rifles and poorly supplied 
with food and ammunition and everything else needed in campaigning, 
performed one of the most notable military achievements in the annals 
of war. , ^ 

That little band, drifting down the Ohio to the West through the 
interminable forest, carried with it the destiny of America. It carried 
with it all that Virginia had inherited from England and all that she 
had herself originated or developed — it carried the English law as applied 
in America, the idea of constitutional liberty, the fine qualities of planter 
culture, the democracy which had grown up under Henry and Jefferson 
and Mason — a rich seed for the fertile soil of the Middle West. 

How the valiant handful came to Illinois and conquered is an old 
story — through their matchless hardihood and their bravery they added 
the West to the United States. When Clark raised the American 
standard over the Illinois forts, the crisis had passed in the fate of the 
nation ; it then became a question only of time before the United States 
should expand to the Pacific. All our great advance towards the setting 
sun was the logical outcome of the American conquest of Illinois. 

It is a fact most gratifying to a Virginian and flattering to his pride 
that the first organization of Illinois as American soil was accomplished 
under the government of Virginia. In the fall of 1778, the assembly 
constituted the new region the county of Illinois in the Commonwealth 
of Virginia. After the old Virginia fashion, a county lieutenant, John 
Todd, jr., was sent out to organize the county and govern it. Thus a 
Virginian county lieutenant was the first civil ruler of Illinois under the 
American flag. Todd appointed judges and effected such an organization 
,as was possible in a territory of vast distances and few and alien inhabi- 
tants. In his letter of instructions to county lieutenant Todd, Governor 
Henry struck the note of true Americanism as by some prophetic instinct : 
"You are on all occasions to inculcate in the people of the region the value 
of liberty and the difference between the state of free citizens of this 
commonwealth and that slavery to which Illinois was destined." Settlers 
from Virginia soon followed the soldiers, and the first permanent element 
in the life of Illinois was thus almost exclusively A'^irginian. 

The rest of the story is familiar to you — how Virginia generously 
resigned the territory which her arms had won to the government of the 
United States. In the due course of time — now just a century ago — 
Illinois began her great career as a sovereign State. The Virginian 
element in Illinois has been an honorable one, and many of the foremost 
citizens of the commonwealth trace their origin to the Old Dominion. 

It Avill be seen that Virginia's share in the making of Illinois was 
a most important contribution. So, too, was that of New England. 
The ISTew England settlers, who came by thousands in the early years of 
the nineteenth century, completed the work which it was Virginia's lot 
to inaugurate. Virginia did all in her power to fashion Illinois into an 
American commonwealth. New England sent her finest blood, her 
keenest brains, to assist in the buildino- of the great State of the Middle 



West. Here the two main civilizations have blended to produce the 
typical American commonwealth and the t3'pical American spirit. The 
rich Illinois lands drew not only Virginian and Xew Englander, but 
Pennsjdvanians and New Yorkers as well, and men from all the Eastern 
States and from be.yond the seas. Here all currents of our life met to 
build up in the Middle West the first distinctively and originally 
American communities. 

In the Middle West the process of nation-making was completed. 
That process had had its origin in Great Britain and in Holland ; and in 
the Atlantic States the ideal of free government, the germs of which had 
been borne across the ocean, had grown to flower. On the Atlantic slope 
modern democracy had its birth and the modern attitude towards life 
came into existence. 

But neither Virginia nor Xew England represented the last stage 
in the long development. About both there lingered much of European 
custom and prejudice; both of them at times looked backwards towards 
the European shore. Both were too self-contained, too marked with 
local characteristics to produce the final type in American civilization. 
That was the work of the Middle West. 

The very names of the East are reminiscent of Europe — Virginia, 
Carolina, Maryland, New York, New England. They reflect the Euro- 
pean colonization of the Atlantic slope. But the beautiful name of Illi- 
nois is novel and unmistakable; it belongs to America and to America 
alone. It breathes the thought of a new world born in the free forests 
and the unfenced prairies of the West. 

In 1812, the London Times, in commenting on the victory of the 
Constitution over the Guerriere, spoke thus of the Americans : "They 
are of us, and .an improvement on us." In the same way the East may 
say of Illinois : "It is of the East and an improvement on the East." 
In Illinois an American community came into existence which had no 
direct contact with European life — which was wholly .American and 
growing to maturity in the age of the expansion of the American spirit. 
In the Middle West the last feudal scars on the soul of European man 
were smoothed away and mankind entered into the full enjoyment of 
modern life, with its broad democracy, its free opportunity and its hope 
of happiness. 

It was the part of Illinois and the Middle West to give the world a 
fresh and rich civilization, which, it may be believed, will in the end 
transform the world. This civilization is democratic but it is also more 
than that. It is not the Athenian democracy of small things. It is a 
civilization which has vastly enlarged the prospect of man's material 
welfare. Here in the Middle West agriculture first became epic ; on the 
broad prairies modern farming-machinery was first used with effect, and 
the world's food supply was increased ten-fold. It is. this largeness of 
life which the Middle West has added to the making of America. The 
Middle West is not a land of pettiness and smallness, of inertia and 
hesitation. It is a country of broad-minded men and women — of people 
M'ho go forward, who are not afraid of the untried, who look towards, 
better things in the future because the present is so rich and full. 



MB 1 3. 6 



We meet here in a solemn hour. The historic civilizations of 
Europe are dying. Science, art, literature, industry are perishing in the 
blood-flamed horror of the Great War. It is the fate of America to be 
the decisive factor in the struggle, to turn the even scales. When the 
titanic struggle for human right shall have ended, the United States will 
be the greatest, richest and most civilized country on earth. It will 
reach in a stride that manifest destiny which the forces of life marked 
out for the land more than a century ago, when the Middle West became 
American soil. How precious American civilization will be in the wreck 
of nations and the downfall of races, we can hardly appreciate as yet. 
But we do know even now that America, as great in her generosity as 
she is terrible in her wrath, will be the hope of the world and that the 
stars of Old Glory will shine more brightly than ever in the darkness of 
humanity's night. 

The place of Illinois in the history of the century just past is a 
great and honorable one. Her share in the achievement of the coming 
century will be even larger. Illinois has always stood four-square for 
patriotism, freedom and the right to live and grow — for all the higher 
things of life. As never before the nation needs the virile democracy, 
the largeness of outlook, the open-mindedness of Illinois ; and because of 
this need the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great common- 
wealth is a time of congratulation and a harbinger of good things yet to 
come. 






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